Language Maintenance and Shift in Sardinia: A Case Study of Sardinian and Italian in Cagliari

Abstract

The conclusions of this research interrogate the accuracy and generalizability of the accepted timing of inter-generational language shift. The analysis of the data on language use in the family domain and outside the family shows, among the other things, that, although the LCs and their parents seem to use mainly Italian, the context examined is an example of contact contexts where latent resources favoring minority language maintenance and heritage language revitalization are spontaneously activated by the social dynamics at play among the interlocutors. Besides, some degree of meaningful variability in the patterns of language use depends on different degrees of familiarity or formality with the interlocutors; their bilingual competence depends on whether they belong to the rural or to the urban communities; and they all tend to use both languages together more often with same-age interlocutors, especially from the hometown, although in different degree, and with different interactional strategies, depending on their urban or rural origin. These conclusions demonstrate that the use of Sardinian is sensitive to socio-demographic variables such as degree of urbanization, age, gender, and social distance, and to interactional variables such as the degree of familiarity with the interlocutor. As a result, CS and CM are regularly used apparently to encode different messages involving these parameters.

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